Total War: Warhammer 3’s spectacular Immortal Empire campaign is five weeks away. We’ve known from last month that it will appear in August (opens in new tab), and in a developer Q&A published today Creative Assembly finally gave us the specific date: August 23.
In case you’re not right with Immortal Empires, it’s a sequel to Mortal Empires, a campaign that began with Warhammer 2 and merged factions and maps from the first two games. The Immortal Empire, then, unites the entire trilogy in an absurdly big world war.
The release date came at the end of the Q&A, but there are some notable nuggets in the rest of the video.
For example, we won’t be visiting the Realm of Chaos seen in the main Warhammer 3 campaign. It makes sense. The whole point of the system was a race to defeat the Demon princes in a battle for survival, without building or conquering the map. It’s such a distinctive system, and tied to a specific story, that it would be an odd fit for Immortal Empires. Furthermore, the field of chaos proved to be quite divisive. I enjoyed it for a few campaigns, but the appeal of Immortal Empires is that it doesn’t sound like the more experimental realm of Anarchy Campaign – it’s a more traditional conquest-focused deal. But on a large scale.
I don’t see this change happening, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be other changes to campaigns and maps. In fact, they are pretty much guaranteed. ,[Warhammer 3] “There’s going to be an ever-evolving, ever-changing campaign,” says game director Richard Aldridge. Great experience ahead. And I dare say that we will change the map and who is in it and everything else.”
Here is a map of the Immortal Empire with all the starting locations announced so far. (image credit: Sega)
Winning conditions are also being changed. There will still be short and long variants, but they will be thematically more appropriate for the faction you’re controlling. For the little ones, you’ll have specific objectives for your great masters, while for the long run racial will be a win-win situation. Ultimately they’ll mostly point you to specific settlements and task you with annihilating other factions, but they’ll give more narrative meaning.
Naturally, the factions are being reworked a bit to fit the new campaign, though these won’t be the massive overhauls we’ve seen before, like the big Greenskin update that dramatically changed Warhammer 2’s orcs. Diya, introduced new lords and added them to the Bhanwar campaign. But you will see things like the changed technical tree and the new starting position. Some have been changed more than others, such as how the Norska is now a traditional settled faction, with the outpost system being thrown out.
I recently jumped back into Warhammer 3 and started a new Area of Chaos campaign with Cathay, but now I know it’s going to be hard to go back to the original campaign when the Immortal Empires are coming out. I am extremely eager to get my hands on this, even though I am anticipating some long twists and turns. And remember, this is going to be beta; There will be some issues with this. I’d rather get the live version now rather than wait a few more months for the polished version, but it’s worth the tempering expectations.
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